


I Taste the Sparks on Your Tongue

by jmcats



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Ziam fic, canon ziam, falling in love fic, sort of fluffy, zayn centric, ziam smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 10:49:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jmcats/pseuds/jmcats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He decides, in these shadows of his house, with this new feeling raised over his skin, that </i>this <i>is his favorite place – right next to Liam.</i></p>
<p>Or Zayn might've fallen for Liam a long time ago, but Harry is the one he awakens him to the idea that Liam has fallen too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Taste the Sparks on Your Tongue

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in my head since the beginning of December - just a scene in my mind where a sleepy Liam stumbles into the kitchen and flirts helplessly with Zayn. This is what happened.
> 
> A huge thanks is due to **Lynn** and **Caitlin** for aiding me in my insecurity about posting this. Blame hours and hours of Bon Iver and "Re: Stacks" for the imagery and the fluff in this piece. I didn't know I needed this fic in my life until I started to write it.
> 
> The title comes from "Come On Get Higher" by Matt Nathanson

 

 

This is their twilight –

His very first flat of his own is his favorite place in this whole city.

Not the endless stretch of Oxford Street, where he can duck off into Selfridges in a pair of mirrored Aviators and a loose leather jacket.  Not just south west where Harrods lies, lit up by twinkling street lamps and the buzz of London traffic.  It’s not the breathtaking view from the bridge over the Thames River under a dusky moon with pinprick starlight or Big Ben or the industrial streets north of his home or that quaint bookshop a few streets just west of his small yard, the one that sells vintage comic books and sick hand-drawn posters of his favorite characters.

No, it’s this house – _his house_ – with the hardwood floors and his king-sized bed and comfortable couch a few steps from the foyer that he has a lie-in on when he actually gets a day off.  This flat with a kitchen he barely uses but spends more time in than his own bedroom with its bay window and a swing of sunlight every morning that dusts everything pale, glittery gold.  The wood steps his socks slip on as he climbs them towards the bedroom or the extra room he stuffs with comic books, unfinished novels, artwork, mementos from their fans.  That spare bedroom that stings with moonlight during the summer, echoing across the walls in a canopy of glow like cupping a firefly between your hands.

This house that his mates flock to like desert dwellers in search of an oasis, crowding the living room, mucking up the floors in his kitchen, hanging off the corners of his pool table, lounging at the sparsely used dinner table until every strip of air smells like teenage boy and _home_.

His favorite place to call home.

“We’ll never make it to New York and Madison Square Garden if I am stuck hiding out here for an eternity,” Harry says between the cracks of silence and a repeat of _Skins_ on the insanely large flat screen – something Louis insisted upon because _‘no flat is complete without a real chap’s telly, I’m telling you Zayn.’_

Harry waves a nonchalant hand that sticks up high from the back of the couch, the fresh stain of ink standing out against almost milky-soft skin and he groans into a pillow with a foot propped over the ledge of that expensively large couch his mum _forced_ him into.

Zayn shakes his head, perched upon a corner of the island in his kitchen, feet kicking back and forth while wading in the precision silence that always echoes down the halls of this house – empty or filled.  The corner of his mouth twitches upward, fingers picking at the fraying material of his jeans, the heels of his bare feet meeting the glossy wood of the island.  The cold granite beneath him is shiny and catches rare specks of the purplish sky outside, manipulating the color and shocking inspiration beneath his skin.

“I thought you weren’t hiding out,” Zayn teases, his nose wrinkling with a wheezing laugh when Harry’s feet kick out from the other side of the couch.

“I’m _not_ ,” Harry squeaks, a tangled mop of curls peeking up from behind the leather and cream-colored material.  His eyes are that in-between of spring and summer, the highest hue of gold transposed upon a lily green and Zayn hasn’t tired of the _life_ behind them, not in these two years as a group or as brothers or as _something more_.

“Then what do you call it?” Zayn asks, lifting a sharp eyebrow to challenge the push of Harry’s dimples, the easiness of his glare like he can’t ever really be mad with Zayn.

He _can’t_ , a natural component of Harry Styles.  He’s not good at being angry or upset or anything other than this constant Zen persona like a habitual weed smoker.

It’s one of the many, many sides of Harry that Zayn’s been in love with since that bungalow and skinny dipping and a Christmas ages ago where Harry clung tightly to all of them with a flood of tears and promises of _‘this is just the beginning, mates, I promise it’s not over.’_

“I call it a _business decision_ to avoid the paps that are sitting outside of my flat – “

“You don’t have one, mate,” Zayn declares with a chuckle, dragging patient fingers through his already mussed quiff, pushing nimble fingers against the sharp streaks that aren’t really that intense platinum anymore – a satin flaxen, almost harvest gold shade that he likes much better.

“ – and _fuck you_ very much, Zayn Malik, we can’t all live like you,” Harry continues, flipping Zayn off with a raised smile and dancing eyebrows.  “I just don’t feel like the bullshit tonight and being followed across London if I decide to party with Grimmy or crash at Lou’s or drag Nialler to a pub with some incredible food and a snog.”

Zayn rolls his eyes, fighting against the natural smirk that settles over his lips.  He drags his index and middle finger over his almost dry lips, sinking in a breath that tastes like laughter over his tongue.

“Another sick night in the life of Harry Styles, right?”

Harry nods with a halfhearted shrug of his shoulders.  He smacks a hand on the back of the couch before sliding back down into the cushions, feet returned to their former position on the arm, crossed at the ankles.

“I think you’re having a sexual identity crisis, mate,” Zayn huffs with a slippery grin that pushes at his cheeks, crinkles his eyes.  He’s halfway through a choked laugh when he adds, “again.”

“I think you’re an absolute twat who should kindly fuck right off,” Harry calls out, his voice still lofty and so far from angry.

There’s a giggle just to the left and behind Zayn that echoes in his ears and patters over his heart.  It’s the kind of sound a child makes after a silly bit in a film, all hands over their mouth with wrinkled eyes and bunched up cheeks.  It distracts and enamors Zayn so quickly, turning just slightly and glancing over his shoulder with heavy bits of a grin floating over his lips – a natural reaction he hasn’t abandoned since the X-Factor and that boy with the too wide brown eyes, thin cheeks, and flat hair.

Liam’s leaning up against the sink with brilliant brown eyes, the shade of mahogany and freshly shaved cinnamon, with loose lips spread into a smile, a telltale shiver of blush across softly round cheeks, thumbing through his Twitter feed in jeans and a clinging raglan sleeve.  It’s his favorite article of clothing now – outside of his Superman shirts and affinity for boyish plaid or button-up Oxfords – and Zayn’s fallen in love with the way it shapes his muscles, carves out the contours and pull of skin across his arms.

He runs a shy hand over his prickly hair, still adjusting to the buzz cut and the feel of it even though it’s been weeks now.  He flutters thick eyelashes and tries to hide his smile, but he’s shit at it and they all know it.

Liam wears his heart on his sleeve, unceremoniously, whenever he’s around them and it’s something Zayn thinks he’s grown into after adjusting to the volume of Louis’ voice and the drag of Harry’s tone when he’s telling a story and the burst of Niall’s laughter and the quiet hum of Zayn when he really likes something.

Zayn watches all of Liam’s nervous queues – because he’s known them for so long now that he mimics them, stride for stride with Liam – before he smiles.  The fidgeting fingers that dance across a phone screen, the constant shuffle and squeak of pristine white Converse across the hardwood of the kitchen, the subtle looks beneath heavy eyelashes, the itching pull of the corner of a bottom lip by white teeth.  Fingers drag against the shorn hair again and Zayn hasn’t stopped looking at him, wide-eyed and fascinated, since Liam decided to cut all of his thick hair off.

The cut adds softness to his profile, accents those round cheeks and the way Liam’s lost most of the baby fat now.  It highlights the slop of his nose, the fullness of his lips, how large his eyes can be beneath those fuzzy eyebrows.  There’s a sharp edge to his jaw and his birthmark is pronounced, right along with his moles and the flecks of freckles that Zayn has to draw up close to view – connecting them like little stars in a midnight sky.

When Harry clears his throat, Zayn looks away with a stain of blush across his cheeks and his own bottom lip nearly raw from absent biting.  He flexes his fingers over the denim on his thighs, dragging the heel of his palm to wipe away the sweat.  He peeks over his shoulder, feeling so melodramatic and in love with the curve of Liam’s smile, and Liam blinks at him for a second before offering up a casual, soft grin that peters against Zayn’s already unsteady heart.

He’s not quite sure when this started – this unwavering sense of feeling out of place, uncontrollable unless Liam was by his side.  This sense that, even here, it’s not home unless Liam comes by and snuggles into the cushions of the couch with his feet propped in Zayn’s lap and a bag of crisps shuffled between them.  This ripple effect like short waves of the tide or long range radio frequencies under his skin but somewhere between recording in studios he didn’t know and fixing the lapels Liam’s velour blazer nightly on a tour that woke the music in their bones and _‘it’s over Zayn, she broke up with me and I don’t know what to do’_ whispered in the dark of a hotel room he doesn’t quite remember except for the feel of the sheets between his fingers and Liam’s damp face against his collar, he fell in love with this feeling of Liam and him.

Not like _that_ – well, not until recently.

Just the bond, the friendship they’ve created under the pressure of performances on a big stage and harmonizing in bathrooms for better acoustics and whispering in the dark of a shitty tour bus, flipping through pages and pages of _Thor_ and _Nightwing_.

The way, underneath all of the layers, Liam’s always been that pulse point between his ribcage.

“A night in?” Liam offers when Harry looks restless from the couch and Zayn can’t stop picking out the little quirks of Liam’s lips, the fusion of stars behind his lashes.

Harry groans, leaning over the back of the couch now with his chin on the highest point and his arms dangling.  He looks like a child, a pout kicked about cherry lips and curls starting to fall into his eyes.

“Innit Andy in town?  Weren’t you supposed to go to the Buddha?” Harry asks with a frown.

Liam shrugs, his grin turning lopsided and grand.

“Another night, perhaps,” Liam says in a voice that’s comforting for Harry, posturing to Zayn.

He knows this is what Liam does – sacrifices himself for all of them.  Choses film nights in doors on rainy days to appease Niall or playing Muse instead of classic Justin Timberlake for Louis or a club crawl with Harry after a few mucked up notes during one of their shows.

_Selfless_ , Zayn thinks and tries to conjure up all of the little adjectives that feel worthy of being associated with _Liam Payne_.

“You don’t have to stay in,” Zayn says with a little guilt stitched into his grin when Liam shakes his head.

Harry groans in mild protest, thumping a fist on the couch and Zayn spots the knowing grin he gives Zayn from the corner of his eye – petulant child.

“No, I don’t mind,” Liam agrees, twirling his phone between his fingers like a magician.

“He doesn’t _mind_ , Zaynie,” Harry sings out, grinning manically.

“Shut it Haz,” Zayn hisses with narrowed eyes and his heel jamming against the wood of the island.

Harry squeaks out a laugh and Liam joins him in the distance, arms folded over his chest with his chin tipped down to create shadows across his flushed cheeks.

“Just because you’re stuck in doors, hiding from the world, doesn’t mean Liam – “

“I am not stuck,” Harry argues but his voice is lofty, almost noncommittal.  “I’m choosing to keep you company.  I could ring up Niall and go to a few dodgy bars.  Maybe message Lou – “

Zayn snorts at that, cheeks lifted and Harry freezes.

There’s a slow grimace to Harry’s face before a whine gets caught in his throat.  “Fuck off Malik.  I know he’s with her,” Harry grumbles, tugging frustrated fingers through thick curls and sighing.

Zayn lifts a challenging eyebrow and it silences Harry so quickly, reverted to a childlike state that drags a smile over Zayn’s lips.  If anything, Harry has been the most consistent out of all of them.

Part of him misses the long looks, the fingers fitting into new spaces, the cuddled bodies on couches for too long while Harry whispered his dreams and Louis was lulled into a quiet, comfortable state between the stars and the bottom of the ocean.

But he knows better.  They _all_ know better now: the dynamics between mates and band members is only as thin as the glass between friends and lovers.

“It’s okay, man,” Liam says and Zayn’s startled into reality again when Liam comes into his view, swinging an arm around Zayn’s shoulders, squeezing rhythmically like he always does.

Zayn looks up, the flashes of Liam’s smile and the circular lights overhead mixing and melding.  He can see the near-invisible stubble coming in along Liam’s chin and jaw, just on the crust of his upper lip.  There’s endearment in those eyes and Liam’s thick fingers rub gently into the muscle of Zayn’s shoulder.

“I don’t mind, really,” Liam assures him with that rich voice that Zayn remembers so well on the other end of a phone, two Christmases ago amongst the loss on X-Factor and an _‘I miss you so much, mate, I don’t know what’s going on but I hope I see you again soon.’_

His lips still quirk and twitch and lift naturally at the way he and Liam stayed up all night chatting after that, the sound of their voices and giggles and the white noise of his television in the background soothing him into loosened nerves and believing in the promises of Simon Cowell.

“I’ll text Andy up, chat up a couple of our mutual mates to take my place,” Liam suggests, his thumb sliding up until the corner strokes over Zayn’s collar where ink stains the skin.  He smiles, genuine and hard until Zayn recedes into his touch and breathes in the scent of mountain air body wash, citrus-like cologne, fresh linen and that heady smell that always lingers to Liam –

The one that covered Zayn’s pillow and sheets in too many hotel rooms, stuck to his clothes after too many hugs, still bleached into Zayn’s favorite shirt somewhere in his luggage after Liam borrowed it for _three weeks_.

“You don’t have to,” Zayn says again, lower, nipping at the center of his bottom lip.

Liam smirks, suffocating a chuckle that shakes against both of them.

“You’re right.  Not for that idiot,” Liam mutters, jerking his head in Harry’s direction even though Harry’s glaring at something on his phone like he hates it.  “But I want to.  It’d be good to just muck around here, right?  Like we used to back at the house.  Just messing about.”

Zayn snickers, nodding his head.  He leans inward, sinking beneath the wing of Liam’s arm, scrunched nose pressing to Liam’s chest for half a second.

“Besides, you know it’s horribly boring without me around here,” Liam teases, a burst of giggles set into the atmosphere when Zayn bites playfully at his nipple through the cotton.  He shakes away, not too far, before leaning back in and smacking a light punch against Zayn’s shoulder.

“Want me to ring up Lou and Nialler?” Zayn offers, hopping off the island.  He stands up a little on the tips of his toes to meet Liam’s height before leaning on the granite surface and relaxing under Liam’s gaze.

“Nah, who needs ‘em?” Liam jokes, nudging his hip against Zayn’s.  He trembles with another laugh, this one so faint but anchored in Zayn’s mind from nights on the bus with video games and whispers about _finally_ making it.

“I do,” Harry mumbles, sighing loudly.

“You’re on punishment, remember?  Too many paps following you and what is this horrid gossip about you and a certain country artist DM’ing on Twitter?” Liam asks over his shoulder with that contemplative look he always wears when the worst is about to happen.

Harry rolls his eyes, sinking back down into the sea of the couch.

“Think it’ll make Lou or Nialler jealous?” Harry inquires loudly, tossing his feet back onto the arm of the couch.

“I think it’ll make the world think less of you,” Liam replies with an even tone.  “Just stick to trying to get Ni to blow you, mate.”

Harry responds with a snort and a middle fingered salute that Liam smirks at, crooked and incredibly charming.

“You really want a night in with that prat?” Zayn hums.

Liam laughs, his face wrinkling into crinkled eyes and soft cheeks and spread lips.  “I don’t mind,” he says with a rush of oxygen.  He shrugs before reaching out and pressing light fingers against the faded blonde of Zayn’s hair.  “I’m just looking forward to chilling with you.”

Zayn beams, sparks on the edge of his tongue and blood rushing his cheeks.  “Chilling, man.”

Liam nods and refuses to shake away when Zayn’s own hand lifts and scrubs over the prickled points of his hair.  He almost careens into it, letting Zayn shape his skull with fingers and smooth his palm over the crown of Liam’s head.

“Just let me go to a store for some supplies because, honestly Zayn, you never keep things in your refrigerator that we can eat,” Liam teases with a half-smirk, poking a spirited finger at the space between Zayn’s ribs.

That space that _he_ fills, whether Zayn wanted it or not.

Zayn groans into his shoulder, nudges Liam away before sighing happily.

“Why don’t we order in, mate?” Zayn offers between that expanse of laughter they share and the silly, perceptive grin Harry shoots them over the couch.  “Or I could go with you?”

Liam shakes his head adamantly with a grin still pressed firmly to his lips.

“’s alright, man,” Liam says, fluttering eyelashes and round cheeks lifting.  “I’ll be right back.  We need stuff and Harry needs _you_ for sanity.”

Harry balks and roars into an echoing laugh while Zayn’s shoulders sink a little.  He presses warm fingers to the cold surface of the island, streaking over the shiny exterior.  He sniffs and looks away when Liam looks on him fondly, burying his smile into his other shoulder.  He twiddles his toes along the glossy hardwood and pretends not to notice Liam shift closer to peck a quick kiss to the crown of his head.

“Leeymo, babe, how many times do I have to tell you, no matter how brilliant you think the chap is, Zayn is not Socrates,” Harry jokes, words still colliding with his snickers and his feet kick wildly like he’s overly amused.

Zayn rolls his eyes, nudging back to feel the heat Liam emits and curls a smile over raw lips at the way Liam’s face scrunches up with humor.  He tells himself he’s staring at Liam to memorize the lines around his mouth when his smiles or the subtlety of his dimples but, honestly, it’s a lie.

He’s helpless and drowning but too scared to reach out for a hand just yet.

“Okay,” he whispers after a long minute, lips moving naturally sideways into a smile with his tongue pressing to the back of his teeth.

Liam grins back, nodding, dragging his knuckles over Zayn’s shoulder until they giggle into the madness.

“Should I make you a list?” Zayn asks, bunching his eyebrows and his lips fall quickly.

“Cigarettes and coffee isn’t a grocery list, Zayn,” Liam hums, knocking their shoulders before teasing fingers up Zayn’s hips.  It’s a small touch, something they all do, but it burns so much brighter when it’s from those long, gentle fingers.

Liam shuffles through the kitchen, pocketing the spare key Zayn keeps in an empty jelly jar his mum gave him filled with cinnamon sticks on her last visit.  He slips on one of Zayn’s beaded bracelets, a woven one, the one from their last trip to Leeds, and his favorite – a threaded one Zayn pieced together when they were three days into the X-Factor house, still learning each other’s habits and the timbre of their ever changing voices.

He watches Liam bunch up his sleeves to fix all of the bracelets properly – looking so much like a hipster or a pretend version of Zayn, maybe Harry.  There’s something oddly cheery and very _Liam_ about his smile, the kick of his feet as he strides over the hardwood to snatch up a silly snapback from one of the counters – another item of Liam’s amongst the endless ones he has all around Zayn’s house because he and the others spend more time here than any other part of London.  There’s a dumb, goofy smile on his full lips as he passes Zayn, rushing fingers up Zayn’s spine like a tease before thumbing through his phone to ring up Paul for a car.

Liam’s halfway to the door and too far from Zayn’s gaze when something choked in his throat escapes his lips.  His fingers drag on the marble as he perks up his head to watch Liam slowly turn on his heels, brow raised into a wrinkle and that smile a half a step lower.

“Liam, babe, it’s subzero out there.  Put on a coat,” Zayn demands with a quiet scowl, leaning back on the island with his arms folded across his chest.

There’s a glint in Liam’s eyes that has Zayn worrying his bottom lip with sharp canines.  He shuffles back through the foyer into the living room, a dopey smile smacked to his mouth.  Zayn clears his throat, tries to remain stern but it’s impossible with this boy and his puppy-like actions.

Harry raises an eyebrow at Zayn, curiosity invested into the curve of his mouth.  Zayn secretly flips him off as Liam slides into one of Zayn’s old hoodies – the Green Lantern one that Zayn adores and never lets out of his sight, except for now.  Harry coughs out a laugh while Liam gets stuck somewhere between the emerald material, dancing around aimlessly while fighting with the sleeves.

Liam huffs and grins, straightening out the fabric until it fits snugly around his shoulders, the lengthy sleeves brushing his knuckles.

“I thought I was daddy,” he teases, tipping his chin up so Zayn can see the brilliance of his smirk.

Zayn flips Liam off this time with a fond smile, dragging fingers through his already taken apart quiff.

“Careful – your fondness is showing,” Harry sings lowly toward Zayn, resting his chin on his knuckles and flashing Zayn that pretty, pretty princess smile he adopted after months of bunking with Louis.

Zayn groans between an inhale and an exhale, dropping his head a little.  He wants something heavy, sharp, _painful_ to toss at Harry but nothing’s in reach and he’s not in much of a mood to spend the rest of his evening at a hospital for stitches and smeared blood.

“Smells like you,” Liam says happily.

Zayn lifts his head to see Liam pulling at the jumper, sniffing at the sleeve and the hood, choking on a laugh.  He’s smiling goofily with crinkled eyes and Zayn weeps on a breath just watching him, suddenly needing a cigarette and a mound of cold air in his lungs.

He waits until Liam is out of focus again and the door clicks shut before dragging the sharpest edge of his teeth over his knuckles at the way Harry keeps staring at him.  It’s unnerving and not on purpose because Harry’s endlessly curious and unaware but it slides the cold into Zayn’s bones.  It curves his upper lip into a sneer and he sighs impatiently, the thud of his tapping bare feet against the hardwood loud.

“Speak Styles,” he hisses, crossing his arms again to throw Harry a pointed look.

Harry shrugs, hanging off the back of the couch once more with dangling arms and pieced together curls.  He sweeps them off his forehead – a trademark created years ago – and puffs out a delicate smile like words are waiting but never released.

Zayn grinds his teeth on his lip, absently wrinkling his brow at the way Harry seems so nonchalant in a completely falsified way.

“Spit it out, dude,” Zayn finally sighs, letting his shoulders go lax and softening the thump of his foot against the floor.

Harry grins and it crawls into Zayn’s space so easily, fitting against Zayn’s insides, right against Zayn’s endless mound of denials – _he doesn’t smoke too much, he’s not really vain, he’s not moody, he’s not wonderfully in love with the way Liam smiles_.

Or the sunlight against those brown eyes or the shape of his fingers along the small of Zayn’s back or _Liam_.

Yeah, Harry’s smile fits lazily right against those things and Zayn sort of loves that too.

Harry snorts into his hand, flicking his head to kick loose curls from his brow, swiping them back with a big hand before snickering, “I think it’s kind of cute.  Or odd, for you.  ‘s not very like you, Malik.  You’re different like this.”

“Like what?” Zayn pretends, pouting and scuffing his heel on the floor.  He exhales a dragging sigh, scrunching his brow before grumbling, just because, “And I’m not.”

Harry laughs, a full belly-aching sound that reverberates against the too perfect acoustics of the hallway and through the foyer.

His cheeks are flushed and Harry’s are lifted, his dimples showing before he replies, “It’s ridiculous.  I was never that bad.”

Zayn fights against a beguiled smile, scratching calloused fingers over the unshaven line of his jaw, the bits of scruff along his cheek.  His fingers flex for a cigarette while his heart resides somewhere between his chest and throat.

_Fuck you Harry Styles, you were_ , he thinks but he doesn’t say it.  He doesn’t say the way Harry was with wide eyes, cheeks stricken pink, fingers always desperate for a touch with the corners of his mouth always tipped up at the sound of Louis’ voice or the boom of his laugh when Harry told a good joke.

“It’s funny because you never saw it, did you?” Harry wonders, fitting his head into the crook of his elbow to gaze at Zayn.  “Like, he’s always made you swoon.  Fuck, remember the first few practices, the _real_ ones and not the ones Louis calls ‘practice’ even though we were just shooting the shit?  You’d watch him sing and forget your words or the notes and he’d guide you through your solos like a savior?”

Zayn groans lowly, ducking his head.

_Fuck you very much Harry Styles_.

“It’s what mates do, unlike you twats who never told Niall when he was off key or help Louis with the high notes,” Zayn points out, narrowed eyes and a flexing jaw his ammunition but Harry’s bulletproof to this act.  They all are, mostly, except when Zayn really emphasizes his words or stays quiet for too long.

Harry rolls his eyes, fixing his smile into something warm, affectionate.

“Yeah, I was never like this,” Harry teases, wild eyes the shade of a rainforest green.

His grin, the breach of evening sky painting across his shoulders and curls, the twitch of his dimple when Zayn stays silent stitches into Zayn’s lungs until he can’t wage the war against his own smile.

“You were _gone_ for Caroline and Grimshaw and fucking the Tommo before you realized you were in a _real band_ ,” Zayn says with a sneer and wriggling eyebrows.

Harry chokes on a whimper, the sound strangled, almost offensive.  His shoulders tense and his fingers move like shadows under the moon over the couch, slow and lazy.

“This is not about me.”

Zayn chuckles, pushing his fingers through his hair again.

“Really?  I thought it was.  Innit the reason you’re at mine instead of out with Lou or summat?” Zayn challenges, tilting his head to admire the amused glow of Harry’s face, the way he isn’t discreet about his smirk or the play of pink across his cheeks.

“Fuck off.”

The words aren’t stern or rough or even the slightest intentional and Zayn laughs at the way he’s certain, after all of these years, Harry still hasn’t learned to shake off all of Louis’ little idiosyncrasies.

“But you’d do it, right?  You’d date him?” Harry wonders between the drag of Zayn’s laugh and the silence that seeps in like dust amid the floorboards.

Zayn lifts an eyebrow, swallowing.  He squeezes something gullible into his expression.  “ _Who_?” he asks, trying to sound coy, hints of sarcasm laid thick into his smile.

Harry groans softly, chucking one of the many throw pillows from the couch at him.  Zayn easily sidesteps it, the clatter of soft material smacking against the fridge to the side of him.

“Liam.  The Payner.  Leeymo.  The dude who loves comic books like you, is shit at telling jokes,” Harry says, no, _whines_ into the echo of their stares.  “The chap who you’ve been in love – “

“I’m not in love,” Zayn says sternly, fixing his eyebrows into lower orbit, his lips pouting.

Harry half-smirks and Zayn hears the lyrics slip off that pink tongue, cherry lips in perfect rhythm, frowning at the ‘ _so don’t forget it it’s just a silly phase I’m going through’_ Harry sings throatily.

Zayn sighs, dropping his chin.  His fingers instinctively find the nape of his neck, trickling over the thick hair and the prickly ends.  He resigns to the inevitable, teeth catching his bottom lip so quickly.  “I don’t know, Haz.  Like, wouldn’t it be bad for us?  Like the band, I mean.  Didn’t we already try this with you?”

“With what?  Me and Lou?” Harry asks, a hint of perkiness dropping into the slow drag of his voice.

Zayn nods slowly, sniffing at the tension that spreads across the stretch of space between them like spilt coffee across the table.

They don’t discuss this anymore – not since _the Olympics Stadium Incident_ , so dutifully named by Niall after the fireworks and the tingling of performing for an Olympic crowd and the tension that severed the tether between Harry and Louis.  It’s still a little fuzzy from the high of adrenaline and the way Liam clutched his hand afterwards but he still remembers the way Louis yelled at Harry and Niall crying in a broom closet just before their performance because he swore _‘the band is over, watch’_ just before Harry walked away with pale cheeks and stringy red lines in his eyes.

Harry waves him off, his smile a half-step behind the roundness of his eyes.  “No, that was kids’ stuff, man.”

Zayn nods, pursing his lips.  He doesn’t believe him, not at all.

“And Grimmy?”

Harry laughs, tipping his head back.  “That was adult stuff, bro.  Like complete _Fatal Attraction_ or something.  A good fuck, bad idea.”

Zayn winces at the idea.  Harry looks like he’s pondering it, grinning wolfishly, rubbing at his chin.  It’s twisted and completely Harry – an understated madness behind those curls and green eyes.

“Whatever, dude.  You’re in love with our little Payner.  Fuck all of it,” Harry laughs, tossing his curls back with one hand.  He rests his elbows on the soft cushion of the couch, chin on his knuckles, grin spread wide like the gap between cities.  He’s a valley of exclamation marks and photogenic absurdity, teeth showing with dimples pronounced.  It’s a little paralyzing and daft.

“Just fuck him.  Or let him shag you.  I’m not quite sure what role you’d be in that situation and I’m certain Leeymo would be willing to play whatever part you’d no doubt ask him to,” Harry teases, biting on the edge of his tongue to subside the echo of his giggles.  It doesn’t work.

Zayn chokes on a whimper, the sound cluttered in his chest, his fingers twitching into fists.  He wrinkles his face at Harry and slouches at the noise at the back of Harry’s throat, a wild laughter that sings out louder than Harry’s best days in the studio.

They love to take a piss at him.  Sometimes Harry or Ant or Danny, possibly Doniya when she feels like it, mostly Louis and Niall.  They know how to fluster him when he’s moody or anxious or deprived of sleep or hasn’t had a good wank in days.  They do it intermediately on birthdays or holidays or on little anniversaries that only Liam remembers.  Or on fucking _Mondays_ just for the fuck sake of it all.

Harry’s laughter crowds into his head, subdues his thoughts to little droplets of leftover rain from a shower.  He hops back onto the island, swinging his feet and pretending not to stare at the door.  He pretends to not wait on Liam’s arrival, that stupid grin, those curious brown eyes.

He rubs absently at the ink on his arm – the crossed fingers, the splattered ink from his microphone, the unfinished pieces.  He hums to the sound of Harry’s finally steady breathing and slumps his shoulders on the ‘ _it’s okay, mate, right?  It happens to the best of us’_ that Harry slips in over the static of the television and the calm of Liam’s voice still in his head.

 

|*|

 

This is their dusk –

The sun has swung low and slow behind the clouds, beneath the sea, out of reach when Liam nudges open the front door and eases into the kitchen with _three_ grocery bags in his arms from Tesco.  Harry’s thumbing through an intense game of Angry Birds Star Wars and Zayn’s still mapping out the cold granite of the island in the kitchen, watching the sun kick off orange beams against an amethyst skyline.  The stars are orbiting the dissipating clouds like small lit up cities surrounding an island.  Everything looks colder, that kind that draws up small goosebumps like the splatter of water from a pebble tossed in a fountain.

Zayn hooks his ankles, hands in his lap while ignoring the buzz of a message from management – _tweet something about Little…_ he’s not interested.  His teeth catch his lip before his smile can pull the corners of his mouth up, blinking happily at Liam when he shuffles close to drop the bags on the counter.  He nudges a knee to Liam’s hip like a _hello_ while Liam shrugs out of Zayn’s hoodie, hiding his smile in the material.  His shirt rides up sloppily, exposing tan skin and developed muscles from work outs that Zayn refuses to join.  Still, he admires the tension in Liam’s stomach and the thick trail of hair from the lip of Liam’s navel and the stretch of reflexive muscles in his back, moving like an endless stream of waves on a rocking ocean.

He swallows on the snort Harry releases, peeking over the couch again like a kid watching his parents flirt.  It’s disgusting, his little eyebrow waggle and flippant expressions, but Zayn ducks his head to crease shadows over his own dopey grin.

“Here,” Liam says softly, fingers flicking a pack of Marlboro’s over the sleek surface until the carton knocks into Zayn’s hip.  “I know you were running low even though you won’t tell me because you know I still don’t approve.”

There’s something teasing in Liam’s grin, the height of his dimples, the way his tongue peeks out between his teeth.  Zayn looks up with a defiant chin, jerking his head like a _thank you_ , cornering a piece of his lip with sharp teeth to still the ache and need to smirk at Liam.

And it’s like that: Liam always knows things like that.  He knows when Zayn is on his last couple of cigarettes, his favorite brand of cherry Cola, the way he wants his coffee in the morning, his disdain for posh things like Egyptian sheets and thousand-thread counts because his mum didn’t raise him to be superficial.

Harry makes a soft noise under his tongue, smirking endlessly with a _‘hello lover’_ attached to the flick of his hair and Zayn only knows the cheap imitation because of Niall and some stupid _Sex and the City_ marathon he suffered through three weeks into the last tour.  He thinks about tossing that silly pillow back at Harry now but Liam’s shuffling it around the hardwood like a football, doing a quick keepie uppie before a neat trick where he bounces it off his chest, looking so damn proud when Zayn’s eyes turn on him.

He can’t help the rush of vitality and exhilaration that floats through his bones, a shy smile creased to his lips at the way Liam giggles with hunched shoulders, eyes already crinkling seconds into the sound.

Harry claps his hands together, the resonance breaking the glass walls between Liam and Zayn until Liam strides closer, sliding between Zayn’s legs where they part at the knees.  His smile is a _welcome home_ that Zayn feels evaporating over his skin before Liam turns on the blush dampening his cheeks, pressing back with his hands settled on Zayn’s knees.  His spine presses to Zayn’s chest and Zayn hooks his chin on Liam’s shoulder, arms caging in Liam’s.

There’s an upward curve to Harry’s grin, crooked and unbalanced but Zayn ignores it for the way Liam rests his head on Zayn’s collar, knocking his hips to Zayn’s swinging legs.

“What do we lads do tonight?  A proper stag night?  I know a few strippers named Candy and Lola and Mrs. Price – “

Zayn chokes on a laugh, Liam’s brow lifted.

“Mrs. Price?” Zayn giggles out, pressing his chin into the gap between neck and shoulder until Liam relaxes.

“She plays the role of a naughty, naughty school teacher.  She’s got a ruler and glasses and loads of _visual aids_ ,” Harry responds with wriggling eyebrows and a curvy smile that Zayn shuts his eyes on, cringing at the things Harry’s probably done with her.

“You’re quite mental.  Have I told you that lately?” Liam wonders, shaking through a snicker.  Zayn catches the vibrations against his chest, on the inside of his arms and thighs.  It stings like freshly made tea and he savors each breath of it.

“Just last Tuesday, mate.  When I suggested we all get tattoos of – “

“A _starfish_.  You wanted us to get a tattoo of a large starfish on our ankles,” Liam announces with a flustered laugh, cheeks brunt crimson under Harry’s ravenous eyes.  “You donut.”

“C’mon Li, there’s symbolism behind it, bro,” Harry chides, sounding so convinced and his aristocratic tone is nothing compared to the way he uses his hands for an explanation.  “It encompasses the beach and our first hit and _What Makes You Beautiful_ is nothing without the beach, man.”

Zayn rolls his eyes, tucking his head into the space below Liam’s jaw while Liam trembles with another laugh.

“Quite mental, indeed,” Liam teases with a stiff laugh, nudging Zayn with an elbow that rattles him until a soft whine escapes his lips and he’s left embarrassed at the wide-eyed look Harry gives him and the quiet part of Liam’s lips for a smile.

“A proper film night is in order,” Liam declares in the silence of exchanged stares and Zayn’s flustered expression.

“You lot have no imagination,” Harry groans, sinking into the cushions like an anchor thrown to sea.

Zayn snorts, his nose wrinkling at the lazy grin Liam offers him.

“A proper film night,” he repeats, drumming his fingers along the flank of body just below Liam’s ribs.  It tenses under Zayn’s touch until Liam’s shoulders drop and Zayn can feel his gravity shift at the way Liam presses back.

Harry huffs from the couch, his phone already alarming the start of another game.  “A film night?  Malik doesn’t even own _Love Actually_ or _the Notebook_ – “

“You and Louis made us watch that movie _six times_ during the tour,” Liam whines with a rumpled face.

Harry snorts, flicking his wrist upward to present Liam with a middle finger extended high.  “And how many times did you lot make us suffer through Christian Bale and his awful Batman voice.”

“Twice,” Liam argues with an ease to his voice, soft and comforting against the shell of Zayn’s ear.

“Twice for _Batman Begins_ , four times of _the Dark Knight_ ,” Zayn reminds him quietly and there’s quiet fingers rubbing at his kneecaps, an extension of Liam’s ostentatious smile.

“Don’t remind him,” Liam hisses with a shifting giggle.

“I will not suffer through George Lucas, _Star Wars_ or _Indiana Jones_ , for Malik tonight,” Harry protests, sitting up abruptly to shoot them a harden glare.  It’s not very effective coming from Harry, maybe Louis, but they let tension rapt across their muscles anyway just for the show of it.

Liam turns a little, still so close and beneath the weight of Zayn’s causal touches.  “Can we watch _Iron Man_?  I want to watch it again,” he says, dreamy like an adolescent with the cheeks and soft eyes of a teenager at full bloom.

Zayn bites on the edge of his tongue through a short laugh, shoulders shaking and thighs unconsciously squeezing around Liam’s hips.

“The first one or the second?” Zayn asks, his lungs dry from lack of smoke and the oxygen Liam keeps siphoning from him with _that look_.

Liam beams, the rough sketch of a night sky spread over his cheeks like grainy imagery from a film projector.

“The original, of course,” Liam replies, unabashed.

_Of course_ , Zayn thinks, nodding.  He leans back to catch the roundness of those cheeks, the way the stubble looks shadowy but light across his skin.  There’s a flex of muscle that shifts his birthmark and beating lashes strike against his cheekbones like lightning pinching rain from the clouds.

“It’s your favorite, right?” Liam teases, learning the unsure rhythm of Zayn’s heart with his fingers across his thighs.

Liam knows, he _always_ does.  Zayn swallows a response, eyes crinkling up with a clipped laugh that starts in his stomach and races past his chest like a match striking.

“ _Iron Man_ it is,” Zayn agrees with the weight of his heart on his tongue and unyielding coil of a _‘slow down, sweetheart, he’s not like that’_ pushed firmly against his chest.

Harry gives him a look over the wedge of the couch that blurs and looks fuzzy because Liam takes up so much of his vision in that second.

They skip discussions over the best Marvel films and Harry draws his knees up to make room for Liam on the couch while Zayn thumbs through his DVD collection.  He drags his fingers over the spines of the _Spider-Man_ , _X-Men_ , and _Fantastic Four_ graphic novel films Liam shoved at him almost two birthdays ago with a gossamer rose tint to his cheeks and twitching lips and restless movement like he was unsure if Zayn would like the gifts.  He glances over his shoulder at Harry kicking feet into Liam’s lap and the shiver of Liam’s laugh, tangling fingers in messy curls and this place feels so much more like home with that squished face and endearing giggle flickering off the walls.

Harry fetches snacks for himself, dropping a bottled water into Liam’s lap before winking at Zayn as he fits into one of the corner chairs, offering Zayn his seat next to Liam.  Zayn kicks at his shin on the way down, squeaking into the cushions and shyly smiling at the line of Liam’s neck when he tips his head back, slides an absent arm around Zayn’s shoulders.

There’s an artless twist to their bodies through the opening credits with Liam’s hand in Zayn’s lap, a thumb stroking the inseam of his thigh and Zayn curling into the weight of Liam’s arm so fervently.  He can see Harry in his peripheral but it’s just a distraction to Liam’s restlessness and the way he fidgets when Zayn’s head drops on his collar.  Their thighs bump and Zayn finds Liam’s hand for a second, not long enough before Liam’s budging up.

“Are you starved?  I forgot to grab us dinner and I’m such an idiot,” Liam stammers, a hand cupping the nape of his neck – so natural, an instinct Liam never abandoned even after the lights of the stage and the thirty cameras shoved in his face and the screaming crowds.

Zayn blinks at him, rapid snapshots of that weak smile and nervous rise of his chest like he can’t quite breathe in this distance.

Harry shrugs nonchalantly, turning back to the television with the ivories and blues playing off his face from the dark of the living room.  The shadows shave off ten years from his face and he’s so docile with a leg crooked over an arm of his chair, a pinkish tongue licking the salt away from his fingers after he munches through half a bag of crisps.

Liam chews on his thumbnail, shifting from foot to foot.  He’s on the balls of his toes, looking down at Zayn, the moon lifted high enough to pale flaxen hues across that nervous bottom lip.

“I could order takeaway from your favorite place,” Liam offers, shaving his hand up the back of his head.  He swallows, a little bobble of his throat that Zayn watches fondly – a nervous quirk he can’t quite get rid of.  “You know that place that serves chicken tikka and rosa and chutney that’s almost like your mum’s?”

Zayn smirks, teeth gnawing at a corner of his lip.  He eyes Liam as he glances toward the kitchen to that large plastic bowl that houses a massive collection of takeaway menus for emergency purposes – or daily nutritional needs because Zayn refuses to cook unless he _has_ to.

He reaches out briskly to curl careful fingers around Liam’s wrist, pressing a thumb to the pulse on the inside before dragging Liam back to the couch.  Liam collapses next to Zayn, laughing nervously at the way they tangle and twist into each other until they’re comfortable again.  There’s fingers sketching the silver fern under Zayn’s collar and he’s pushing at the raglan until his calloused tips are drawing invisible lines over the soft part of Liam’s belly.  They crisscross somewhere in the middle with hips pushed together and Zayn’s head pressed to the hollow of Liam’s throat and he feels Liam sniff at him, dragging his nose over Zayn’s quiff until they’re reattached by their breaths and not their touches.

The television plays on a low buzz, the explosions playing like the fizzy bubbles of a Coke, the words a mumbled gush of wind in the coves.  Harry falls asleep somewhere in the middle of a Pepper Potts’ ramble and his snores sneak under the sound of their breathing syncopating in the dark.  They’ve followed the natural pull of gravity into each other, spread across the couch with Liam’s arm around his waist and Zayn’s hand pressed to the strong heartbeat in the hollow of Liam’s chest and their legs wedged in uncomfortable positions they refuse to move from because _connection lost_ feels so life threatening in these shadows.

Fingers crook against his chin, pull gently until he’s missing half of Tony Starks’ character development and burning away in the ashes of Liam’s quiet smile.  His fingers twist in the fabric of Liam’s shirt and he’s a half second away from a grin when Liam nudges lift his chin up and he scoots closer to press soft lips to Zayn’s.

Liam kisses Zayn, gentle and cautious, because he’s taken to doing that since the breakup: kissing Louis on the cheek or the soft lines of Harry’s neck or the top of Niall’s fluffy hair or Zayn’s lips.

It’s always fuzzy and short and quiet.  But never with _tongue_ and _intent_.

Not until now.

The hissing crackle of missiles in the background drowns miserably under the sound of Zayn’s heart and the push of a moan from Liam’s mouth to his.  It’s a soft rub that turns a little intense when Liam parts his lips, nuzzles his nose to Zayn’s as he changes the angle and his fingers twitch along Zayn’s jaw to find the perfect pressure like a hotel showerhead.  It’s gentle, almost childlike and innocent but Liam flicks the tip of his tongue, on purpose, over the seam of Zayn’s lips and the world expands in a dizzying motion around him.

Zayn half-kisses back on instinct but surprise stills his lips and he parts his mouth for oxygen, not the tongue that Liam feeds him instead.  His inhale is sharp and muffled over Liam’s mouth, the smile Liam presses into.  His eyelashes flutter on his cheeks while Liam’s hand cups the back of his head to hold him in it, licking chapped lips wet and malleable.

He can’t help the way his hips ache and he pushes against Liam for something exaggerated.  It tickles a laugh from Liam’s lips, the sound vibrating against Zayn’s before he fists Liam’s shirt out of uncertainty.  It’s not a tease – not with the way Liam kisses back when Zayn moans softly – and Zayn loses himself for seconds against that mouth.  But it’s still slow and the kind of first kiss – first _real_ kiss – that Zayn’s never had.

Not with someone he’s in –

He holds that thought in the ashes of his mind, dusting it away when Liam’s nose brushes over his again.

Liam pulls back with crinkled eyes, shiny lips that are full, almost swollen from the pressure.  Zayn can’t read the blush in the dark or the halo of blue light from the television but he skates fingertips over Liam’s cheeks for the heat residing there.  Liam’s smile is sugary and distinct, the way he gets when someone asks him about Batman or their music or his favorite films.  A thumb presses into the side of Zayn’s neck while fingers map out the tattoo on the back of his neck and Zayn stretches against Liam for reassurance that this firm body is still beneath him.

“Can I stay in your room?” Liam asks after another kiss that’s too brief to be catalogued in this haze.

“Yeah, sure man.  You know I don’t mind sharing a bed,” Zayn says, sounding aloof and friendly because he’s still not certain what this is.  Maybe it’s just another phase – like cutting off your curls and inking chevrons on your arm and partying whenever your mates call you up.  Maybe Liam’s just testing the feel of kissing random people and how fortunate that Zayn is so _willing_ , so incredibly daft for him.

Zayn punches Liam’s shoulder with a weakly curled fist, laughing.  “We can sleep and – “

Liam groans into Zayn’s shoulder, tensing under him with cheeks thickly stained by his blush.

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” Liam says into his collar, shaking his head.  He snaps back briskly, shoulders lifting with a cringe and he wiggles beneath Zayn at the honesty Zayn offers him.

“I mean, I do.  I wanna sleep with you but _more_ ,” Liam stutters out, eyes looking everywhere but the space between Zayn’s chin and brow.  “I want more, okay?  I mean, like are you okay with it?  With the more stuff?”

Zayn tilts his head, pushing down a snicker that sizzles over his lips like a snort.  He rakes dull nails over Liam’s scalp and pushes up into him, a slow grind that Liam mutely groans at.  His spine arches for Zayn and Zayn snuffles over his neck, lips catching on the pulse under his skin.

Liam tries again, for the fuck of it and for the way Zayn tilts his head back to smile.  “Can you take me to your bedroom?”

The night plays loud harmonies over their faces before Zayn inclines, kissing Liam this time.  He does it with slow reaction to the way Liam pulls at his shirt, learning these lips like he’s never seen them or felt them.  He drags sharp teeth over a full bottom lip and teaches Liam the way to kiss with tongue, licking at his canines and dragging over the roof of his mouth.  Their soft sounds like the morning waking up to a rainstorm before he feels paralyzed by Liam’s giggle, the way he grins against Zayn’s lips.

They don’t say anything but Zayn twists his fingers around Liam’s, palms pressed together for a promise.  They help each other off the couch, fingers still twined while their free hands adjust themselves in their jeans.  He sinks into the kiss Liam presses to his cheek and lets Liam lead him toward the stairs, feet pattering out the echo of their hearts toward his bedroom.

He doesn’t say how much he wants it or asks if Liam’s sure because neither of them freeze in the archway when Liam presses him to it and kisses him with deft effectiveness.  It’s devoid of technique but made of emotions Zayn can see, even in the dark.  It’s like broken bones and fractured breathing but Zayn stutters his hips to Liam’s until his covered cock meets a waist and Liam’s leg shifts between his thighs, the stars navigating their footsteps as Liam kicks the door shut.

 

| * |

 

This is their midnight –

The moon casts beams through the window of his bedroom, obscure patterns that look broken over the sheets and across the walls like harbor lights in the fog.  There’s sweat still glazed across his skin, his hair rumpled and wrecked, his body spread out like a starfish across his bed.  His chest tries to keep up with his need for more oxygen while he rubs his fingers over his bruised, shiny lips.  He swallows on an unfamiliar taste in his throat but doesn’t cringe at the flavor or the way it still rests sharply like unripen fruit on his tongue.  His feet kick from beneath the sheets, the cold October air seeping in through the panes of the window until a shiver dances over his body and he’s certain it’s not completely from the temperature.

He pushes fringe off of his forehead, the heel of his palm scrubbing away perspiration and his skin feels so alive, awakened.  There’s a prickle beneath his fingertips and on the edge of his lips from the places he’s touched, explored, defined.  He smiles, shifting against the cool sheets until they saturate his naked body in _relief_ and half-turns to the boy next to him, unashamedly grinning at the shift of muscles and the slow crawl to get closer.

Liam smiles at him from an avalanche of pillows with flushed skin still stained pink.  He’s on his stomach, Zayn on his back, and these kinds of opposites sit with Zayn as he trips his fingers upward to drag over Liam’s buzzed hair.  There’s something goofy about Liam’s grin and Zayn wonders, for a long time, if he’s ever been touched like _this_ before.

A mewl slides past Liam’s bitten lips, a cheek pressed into a soft pillow to cover the blush that pinks his cheeks.  Their fingers tangle somewhere in the sheets between their restless bodies and there’s a heady scent of come and sweat and sex, no matter how minor, that Zayn drags into his lungs.  He presses the side of his face to the inside of his arm, shuffling on the creaking mattress until they’re close enough to spot the freckled browns in Liam’s eyes, the way his fuzzy eyebrows keep lifting up as to say _‘that was incredible.’_

And Liam’s said it, repeatedly, since Zayn’s jaw went slack around his cock and they both fisted the sheets through the flight of their high.

“That was,” Liam pauses, the words heavy on his tongue when Zayn makes a protesting noise, smirking at the shyness constricting Liam’s throat.

He nods at Liam, squeezing their fingers together for an _‘I know’_ that never comes.

Liam chews on his bottom lip, his nose wrinkling with a quiet giggle that evaporates into the air that’s already thick with their moans still painted across the walls.

Zayn pushes back his hair with a sweaty hand, waiting patiently until Liam climbs the divide to press his mouth against Zayn’s, tongue flicking out experimentally like they both need to know what Liam tastes like or how Zayn’s come still sticks between Liam’s fingers.  He knows there’s wet spots across the sheets from where Liam rubbed the come from his chest – _Zayn’s come_ , hot and thick – against them and Zayn’s dick is still half-hard at _anticipation_ and the breathless plea Liam gave afterwards for another round, soon.

He skims his tongue across Liam’s shiny bottom lip, tastes the remnants of the lube Liam used to slick Zayn’s cock with.  He shakes at the way Liam tugged him, the wet sound of his palm against Zayn’s shaft, the way he suckled the head with loose lips in such a novice manner that Zayn couldn’t help his groan or the way his toes dug into the sheets.  It was almost as if Liam was begging, pleading for a way to please Zayn.  To be Zayn’s _everything_ between these sheets and beneath the roll of the moon.

It was clumsy and virginal and Zayn thinks it’s the best half-blowjob he’s ever received, even if Liam tongued his slit like a professional and scraped unsure teeth across the taut skin like a rookie.  He wonders if he was any better, except days in Bradford testing his sexuality with a few lads from other schools stripped him of that amateur credibility long before he was a shy kid standing in line for an audition.

“Was that supposed to happen?” Zayn asks between kisses, fanning his fingers over Liam’s soft cheek, scratching his nails over rough knuckles.

“Oh, fuck Zayn,” Liam croons, smiling through another kiss that’s sloppy and skittish.  He curves in closer until he’s half on top of Zayn to laugh a ‘ _yes_ ’ into Zayn’s mouth, a slow tongue following.

There’s a weightless pull to their mouths, Zayn’s hand finding Liam’s hip to drag him further up and on Zayn.  A hand rests against his chest, just under the Arabic with fingers scratching for bone and hollowed spaces.  Liam’s nose nuzzles his against the backbeat of their still stammering breaths until Zayn nips at Liam’s lip to draw him back.

“And was it, like, how you wanted it?” Zayn wonders, tipping his chin down to look into the ambush of shock in Liam’s eyes.  They’re still blown and electric, the curve of his cheeks pushing them into narrowed slits with a laugh attached.

“Don’t ask dumb things like that, man,” Liam says through a faltered breath.  “I can’t explain – “

“You could _try_ ,” Zayn interrupts because part of him still aches for a _why_ or a _how long_ that Liam keeps to himself.

Liam snorts out a noise that sounds verging on a whimper, dragging his nose over Zayn’s neck before stiffening kisses to the spaces marked with tiny bruises from his tongue and teeth.

“D’ya really want to know?” Liam asks into the skin that’s shrouded in shadows, the rough of Zayn’s stubble stinging his lips a shade of red that feels permanent and erotic.

Zayn nods for him when Liam draws back, stroking his thumb over those lips.  The drag of his bottom lip over the head of his cock rakes over and over his mind and he sighs happily at the way Liam bites at the nail, sucks the flesh like he’s trying to make Zayn remember.

“I often think about, when I’m alone in my own flat or whenever I wasn’t with her, why I miss being on tour or doing appearances or in stupid hotel rooms built for one, not _three_ ,” Liam explains, his voice hushed like these sort of secrets were not meant to be exposed.  “And I think about why I miss being in each other’s face almost every morning and through every night.  Why I miss _you_ , even when you’re a few feet away, man.  Like why I want to crawl into your bunk to listen to you sleep or ring you up when I’m two hours away to ask you to come to Wolverhampton even though I know you need your space.”

Zayn blinks at him, stuck on the same breath that’s been in his chest since Liam crawled on top of him.  Nervous fingers flex over his ribcage and scratch nonexistent nails down his sternum and he wants nothing more than to kiss Liam into more words.  He spots the tension in hunched shoulders and strokes a hand over them until Liam submits, still looking down rather than into Zayn’s eyes.

“I get that about you, Zayn, even if Harry always wants you to hang out or Louis crashes on your couch for days or Niall phones you from Mullingar to see if you’ll meet him for drinks in a week,” Liam adds, fumbling with a nervous laugh.  “I don’t want to be a bother even though I know you’ll say I’m not.  Like, you’ll just invite me up and let me steal your comics.  But I dunno.  Like, I miss you when you’re quiet or bunking with Niall or, fuck, this is hard – “

“You’re doing good,” Zayn says reactively, smiling when those wide eyes finally lift.  He strokes his thumb just beneath them, lets Liam’s eyelashes kiss his skin and it’s a full body wave crashing against him, his fear of water so real when he’s _drowning_ in Liam’s gaze.

Liam’s face scrunches up so sweetly with a rattling laugh, a hand smacking playfully against Zayn’s shoulder.  “I’m not.  I sound daft and,” Liam falters between a kiss Zayn slides across his lips and the hand sneaking over his hip, “I don’t know, man.  It’s just on my mind all of the time.”

Zayn smiles against his mouth, nips Liam’s bottom lip when a hand chases the rise of goosebumps over his flesh.  His legs part, thighs bracketing Liam’s hips and the play of fingertips to the synchronization of their mouths is incredible.

“Can we not talk about it right now, mate?” Liam asks, his voice a sliver shyer, two tempos slower, wasted on oxygen and smiles under the pluck of his heart.

Zayn bites on his lip to stifle a laugh, his thumb pressing to all of the contours of unsteady hips that keep dragging across his own.  They’re paralyzing, sweet symphonic sounds of the sheets rustling and the mattress dipping under their weight.  The pillows behind his head sink in when he presses back, Liam’s mouth bruising his skin with a collection of star-printed love bites from teeth, added suction.

He shifts their hips so stealthily that Liam looks shocked and starry eyed when Zayn rolls them, pins Liam beneath his own lithe body.  There’s breath crowded into his lungs, little sparks and clouds and _Liam_ , as he leans in to mouth at Liam’s jaw.  His fingers press around Liam’s wrists, keeping them at his sides and the tangle of cotton around their legs binds their hips to a solid one-two rhythm.

“No talking right now,” Zayn whispers along the planes of Liam’s chest, across tan skin that’s sunset gold in this dull light.  He grins when Liam’s breath hitches, his thumbs leaving a crescent on the inside of Liam’s wrists.

There’s a rasp to his voice even though he hasn’t smoked in hours and a low growl to his words when he mouths out a ‘ _we don’t have to talk but there’s so much I want to show you’_ over Liam’s collar.

A hiccupping giggle sprints after his words, the sound coming from Liam, before he swirls a tongue across a nipple, maps out Liam’s skin with the tip of his tongue.  He inks out symbols and letters, sliding over droplets of sweat and the stains of his come stand out even though they’ve been scrubbed away by the sheets.  He feels Liam’s cock twitch across his stomach, blurting out thick drops of precome that go sticky between them.  The bed does that subtle creak like tiptoeing over floorboards in the dark when Zayn rolls his own hips, nudging his erection to Liam’s thigh.  The crossroads are between their chests and heartbeats and Zayn’s lips leaving Liam’s swollen once more, aching moans like _more, more, more_ shared between them.

Zayn finds the lube between the chaotic swirl of sheets and pillows, gentles kisses across Liam’s throat and the dip of his collar and the rise of his chest while slicking a few fingers glossy.  He sneaks tender bites over the round of Liam’s broad shoulder, feels the muscles go tense when he nudges Liam’s legs further apart.  It’s an echo of raindrops or the hollow call of a bird in his ear when Liam sighs contently at Zayn’s soothing strokes, his thumb pressing against the rim like he’s asking for permission.

“This okay?” Zayn asks over Liam’s lips rather than against them, smiling at the lazy flutter of Liam’s eyes.

“S’okay,” Liam whispers back, his spine arching achingly and his stutter out of rhythm when Zayn strokes his index finger over Liam’s hole.  “Just – it’s just the fingers, right?  Because while there are so many things I want to do, I’m not sure I can – “

“Relax,” Zayn says with a press to Liam’s mouth this time, smiling at the shudder of Liam’s breath when he adds a little pressure.  “I won’t – not now.  But maybe someday, if you let me, yeah?”

Liam nods into the kiss that Zayn secures, fingers tangling into the sheets when Zayn slides a finger inside.  It’s slow, careful, almost casually lethargic.  Zayn gives him time to adjust, to stop the shake of his thighs or the pinched sound of his breathing.  He lines Liam’s neck with a rush of kisses, perpendicular and sideways and linear until he fits all the way in to his first knuckle.

“C’mon, babe, breathe for me,” Zayn insists, nudging his forehead to Liam’s jaw until Liam tips his head back and the gasp of air that parts his lips is like the winds after a tidal wave.  He pulls at the sheets with flushed cheeks before sinking further onto Zayn’s finger.

Zayn swirls his finger in all the way to the second knuckle, Liam falling pliant beneath him.  His cock twitches against Zayn’s abdomen, slicking their skin with his wetness.  Zayn smiles against his cheek, loves the quiet drag of still youthful skin and inconceivable stubble except Liam’s hairy almost everywhere now.  There’s downy soft hair on his thighs and a thick trail from his navel.  There’s a dense, springy patch dancing around his cock that scratches over Zayn’s stomach and he’s so masculine.  It’s distracting until Zayn forgets to add the second finger when Liam pushes back against his first.

Free fingers find Zayn’s shoulder, giving a soft squeeze with almost raw honey eyes saying _‘I’m ready’_ before Zayn slides in a second finger to match the first.  There’s a tenseness that strokes Liam’s bones, back arching high this time but he comes down so beautifully.  He sighs and grins and doesn’t put much effort into the kiss Zayn offers him because the pressure –

Zayn tongues his name to Liam’s lips and jabs on the shake Liam provides.  He parts his fingers to stretch him before sinking further, further.  He finds it on the edge of Liam’s last exhale, pressing against Liam’s prostate.  He breaks like glass and squeaks and sighs, panting through a march of breaths while Zayn pushes down firmly.

“ _There_ , yeah?” Zayn teases, grinning to the shadowy hollow under Liam’s jaw.

“Oh fuck.”

“I remember the first time I felt that,” Zayn mumbles, lips too busy learning the shape of Liam’s neck.  “By myself, in some damn hotel room – thinking about you.”

“No,” Liam stutters, eyes on the ceiling, the world a dense fog of what was.

Zayn presses harder, stroking that tender spot until Liam smacks his shoulders.  He snorts into Liam’s skin, spare fingers holding Liam’s hips still because he’s bucking and restless under Zayn – something like rough tides under a grey sky stricken quiet after the thunder.

“You’re the best kind of wet dream, man,” Zayn whispers, admiring the ruddy ink his lips have left behind across Liam’s collar – he’ll be banned from low-slung collars and Henley’s for at least a week, probably by Louis or Paul, and pride swells up large in Zayn’s chest.

“Zayn,” Liam breathes out, the sound so exotic and fruitful.

Zayn grinds his own erection into the sheets, that open space between Liam’s legs with thoughts of replacing his fingers with a bare cock.  He can’t steady his breath on the concept but he smiles across Liam’s lips instead.

“Can you touch yourself?” Zayn wonders, too distracted with the roll of Liam’s hips and fingers going three deep now to pull apart tight skin and sink Liam deeper into the sea.

Liam half-nods with his pupils blown wide and his skin feverish.  There’s sweat slick over his brow, shiny against the hollow of his throat, damp across his chest.  His feet rustle over the sheets and his legs drag further apart before he fits a hand between their bodies, a million suns igniting the fields when he wraps his fingers loosely around himself.

“That’s it,” Zayn chuckles, lifting an eyebrow at the low growl in Liam’s throat.  “Feels incredible, innit?”

Liam pants out a response that sounds like _‘I hate you’_ but melts into _‘don’t stop, you’re amazing’_ when Zayn strokes his prostate again.

He grinds down onto Zayn’s crooked fingers, hiccups out little sounds that Zayn tangles himself in.  Zayn rubs off against the mattress, engrossed in the friction and almost missing the pleas that skate off Liam’s tongue and teeth.

“Mouth,” Liam begs on the wings of uncertainty.

Zayn scurries upward with a laugh, rocking his cock against Liam’s thigh this time.  Liam ruts back and their lips collide in the middle of his inferno.  The body beneath him wiggles and jerks at the loose flow of Zayn’s lips and his knuckles brush against Zayn’s stomach.  There’s the slick smack of Liam’s fist around his cock with a thumb pushing the foreskin back and the squelch of Zayn’s fingers throbbing inside of Liam’s tight hole, their anchors thrown and dragging on the bottom of this ocean.

He shifts his hips in an unsteady pattern that feels so right with Liam breathing across his lips.  They’re trying to find a way to stay synched but it isn’t working and Zayn throws a _‘fuck it’_ into the air before crashing against Liam’s lips.

Liam comes first, twisted beneath him with clenched eyes and Zayn’s name splattered over his tongue.  It’s thick spurts of come that sail high like sky rockets and Zayn is dizzy off the stiff breaths that fall from Liam’s lips.  He wriggles against Liam’s thigh, feels a warm, sticky hand wrap around the head of his cock, a thumb teasing the slit and it’s a sudden loss of blood from his head down to his cock.  He loses focus, bites a little too roughly against Liam’s lips and floods his fingers, stripes his thigh, dampens that thick curl of hair around his flaccid cock with his come.

They laugh into each other’s mouths afterwards, instant gratification.  Zayn mouths at the pulse under Liam’s skin, across his neck.  Their fingers, the clean ones, meet between the sheets and tangle around each other, soft squeezes like an _SOS_.  It feels incredible between the solid pulls of breath he shares with Liam.

He’s waiting on the awkwardness, the moment where they’re not just two mates in each other’s arms.  He waits on the _but where is this going_ or the second Liam realizes he doesn’t want Zayn because there’s still Danielle, somewhere.  Or maybe not.  Maybe this is like those stupid endings to Harry’s favorite kind of films where the love story isn’t so tragic.

Liam’s lips trail along his hairline and, off the urgency of his own fears, he leans up to kiss back.  He smiles and giggles at the slide of Liam’s tongue against his own, lets the stars outside paint constellations over their naked skin.

“Sleep you idiot,” Liam says into his mouth, an arm curling around Zayn’s hip, swinging them onto their sides.

Their legs stay woven under the sheets and Zayn smiles into his pillow shamelessly at the way Liam whines when he shuffles back too far.

“We look like complete twats,” Zayn mumbles, his thumb relearning the skin over Liam’s knuckles.

“No, man,” Liam promises, sliding forward until the sheets slip off his bare hip and Zayn’s lips curl into an _‘oh’_ at the sight.  “We _were_ complete twats.  Now we’re just – “

“Hey you,” Zayn interrupts, squeezing Liam’s fingers a little firmer.  “We don’t have to do this.  The whole name it or chats about what’s happening.  We can just – “

“Just be,” Liam mumbles into Zayn’s pillow, smirking.

Zayn nods, grinning back.  He shifts a little closer until his forehead is pressed against Liam’s and the silence between them is louder than their breathing.  It’s the _yes_ and the _okay_ and the _I will follow you anywhere_ that Zayn loves the most when it’s just him and Liam.

 

|*|

 

This is their dawn –

The world is a bleary spun web of soft images, teardrop focus on the ceiling and the twisted sheets and the sun still below the horizon as it lathers the bedroom is smoky blues.  He blinks his eyes against the fuzz of a quiet slumber, fingers caught in the sheets and around the wrist of the slow-breathing boy next to him.  He shifts on a stretch, a heavy yawn, and his axis gravitates toward the muffled giggle beside him.  The stars bid their goodnight behind mauve skies and the weight stacked on Zayn’s lungs when he gets a glimpse of nebulous brown eyes, the soft rounds of a red mouth, the twitch of a nose disarms him in this fog.

He bites out a smile for Liam, still half-dazed on his sleep like he’s floating.  Liam, with lips like sticky pieces of sour candy and pinkish like fresh spun cotton candy.  Cheeks flushed pale, his mole standing out, the coffee-stained birthmark on his neck visible in the slowly receding shadows of the room.

Liam with pink cheeks and shy smiles and nervous touches like he doesn’t know the barriers or limits between them anymore.  He’s fragile but far from dainty or breakable.  He’s so much stronger now, but so much like that embarrassed wide-eyed kid with dodgy hair and all lean muscles, those broad shoulders like at the X-Factor house.  When they first met, when Zayn thinks he fell in –

_Or maybe not_.

And Liam’s only ever been like this with Zayn.

He’s not clumsy or painfully shy like Harry was, like Louis should’ve been, like Zayn _is_.  He was bred for the spotlight, unlike Zayn who had to be taught, learn quickly.  He’s only vulnerable in the dark, so close to Zayn, careful touches that set the wind in his sails and ignite this goofy smile over his lips.

Outside of four walls, Liam is strong.  They’re all viciously loyal to one another – like best mates _should_ be – but Liam is a level above even Louis.  He’s square shoulders and coiled muscles whenever someone makes fun of Niall’s smile or attacks Louis on Twitter or tries to take advantage of Harry or calls Zayn names, says he’s an arse to their fans for needing privacy, alone time.

But Liam gets that about Zayn.  Sits for hours in harbored silence, cuddling to Zayn’s side until Zayn’s bones come alive and he can crawl back into that unwavering spotlight again.

There’s a flick of a pink tongue over chapped lips, the slow swallow that shifts the position of Liam’s birthmark.  An untidy smile creases lips Zayn knows by taste now rather than just sight.  His fingers skim over the four chevrons toward unmarked skin where he wants his name in bold letters, fancy script.  It melts away the dust in his eyes as he tries to mimic Liam’s calm breathing.

“Want something to drink?” Liam asks, his voice sinking below the wind howling outside of the window.

Zayn groans, blinking his eyes shut again while knocking his bare ankle to Liam’s under the sheets.  He tries to snuggle into the soft material, into the warmth that’s fingertips away before mumbling, “Just stay in bed.  Fuck, ‘s too early for anything.”

Calloused fingers tickle up his waist, over the stretch of vulnerable skin Zayn hides from the world, across his ribs until Zayn kicks back in retaliation.

“Fuck off, you prick.”

Liam snorts, his thumb creasing inward until Zayn flickers his eyes back open.  There’s a laziness about Liam’s smile that reminds Zayn of songs he can’t remember the words to, instrumentals he could never pattern his hips to.

The sheets slip away to expose taut skin and legs Zayn knows too familiar now until Liam’s close enough to press a small kiss against Zayn’s lips.  He kisses back for the thrill, the chase, the catalyst that follows when Liam moans woefully.

Liam looks reluctant when he flutters his eyelashes like a nymph, fingers curling through the sheets to find Zayn’s.

“Was that okay?  I mean, like I know we haven’t had a chat but was it okay?” Liam asks with wriggling eyebrows like he’s trying to search for the words or the things he _should_ say.

Zayn groans out a chuckle, dives into the bottomless ocean of firewood crisp brown eyes to kiss him just because he thinks he can.  There’s a playful giggle hung up on their breaths like this is ridiculous.

_They_ are ridiculous.  The whole thing is just –

He slaps Liam’s bum as a diversion to the way his fingers drag over prickly hair on Liam’s head.  He chews on his thumbnail instead of his bottom lip and Liam rolls his eyes, expectantly.

“Harry’s still sleeping,” Liam says breathily like he’s just catching up with the explosions beneath his skin, under his vital organs.

“Haz sleeps through hail and thunder and a manic shag session between Niall and some random bird from the club,” Zayn points out, half of his grin hidden away in the fluff of a pillow.

“I could sneak downstairs,” Liam offers with knuckles carving out the sinewy muscles of Zayn’s stomach, “grab us some grub?  Maybe some drinks?”

Zayn laughs, short of breath, at the suggestion.  He feels like a kid in the heat of summer, some teenager caught up in his first high and needing munchies.  It’s a post-coital bliss in the undertow of emotions and Zayn’s not running from it.

He’s running _into_ it, headfirst.

“Okay,” he replies, teeth finally pinching his lip at the way Liam beams.

There’s a simmering whine caught on the walls of his throat when Liam smiles, detangles himself from the sheets and their reverie and _Zayn_ but he holds onto it when Liam stumbles off the bed, bare arse on display as he searches the battlefield of their clothes for his boxers.  It’s amongst the wreckage of jeans and stretched shirts, beyond the graveyard of socks and Zayn’s discarded varsity jacket from an almost forgotten tour.

He stretches his vision over the curve of Liam’s spine, the dimples in his back, the freckles, the pale skin where his bum and upper thighs meet.  He smiles against his wrist, stifling a giggle when Liam peaks over his shoulder.  The pressure that builds on his chest when Liam winks but doesn’t return for a kiss leaves him floating on unsure tides.

“I’m not ruining this by leaving, right?” Liam asks with a hand on the knob of the door and two uncertain feet refusing to move.  “You won’t change your mind or something when I – “

“There’s nowhere else for me to go, Liam,” he says assuredly, slacking away the smile for something serious, honest.  “There’s not a single place I’d want to be.”

It sounds genuine, beats blush to Liam’s cheeks and he’s offering up a stupid wave, all wiggling fingers and scrunched nose, before slipping out the bedroom.

The sun is a faint flicker of a flame upon the horizon when he succumbs to an untouched need in his bones.  He crawls from beneath the sheets and the exposure of something new across his heart – it’s inked to his skin in variations, love bites, the flush of his chest.  He kicks around loose pieces of clothing for his briefs, hopping into them on stammering feet before dropping his shoulders and searching his jeans for his pack of smokes.

He slides a window open to the rush of London air – crisp, cold, defiant against the skin – before finding a seat on the sill.  He taps the bottom of his pack, fingering out two cigarettes.  He slips one between tight lips, kissing around the filter while he lays one in the windowsill for emergency purposes – because everything in his nervous system and his blood and his cells speaks Liam’s name in broken syllables and that’s _new_ , a bit frightening.  He lights the fag and the first couple of drags taste like sanity amongst the pileup.

The nicotine breaks up the rush in his blood stream and he blows bluish grey smoke into the open air that pricks his flesh.  Zayn rubs fingers into the nape of his neck to diffuse the tension, watching the tip of his fag glow an angry tangerine as he sucks in another breath.

He thinks about those first few nights after the breakup, when Liam was a hollow of self-destruction in Louis’ arms or against Harry’s side.  He was wet eyes in the bathroom when Zayn found him against the tiles, knees pulled to his chest like this was the end.

_‘It’s just beginning, man, you’ll see,’_ he promised against Liam’s temple and the tear-soaked, trembling smile Liam offered him showed hints of life that Zayn clung to until they were laughing and huddled in that hotel bathroom to the sounds of Harry and Louis fighting and Niall laughing madly through a game of FIFA.

He muses over the phone calls from Danielle that Liam never responded to, the morning after in a tangle of boys, half-eaten bags of Doritos, pillows built like a fort around them with Niall’s foot wedged into his side and Liam’s perfect smile showing through the creaks of sunlight.  The fingertips that pressed to his collar like Morse code – _thank you, my hero, don’t move_ – that stung when Liam yawned into Harry’s curls and slithered away.  The barricade they created around Liam until he cut his hair and inked his skin and fell into _rebellion_ without a net below him.

But they always caught him.  Zayn always made sure he landed on sure feet, a hand to the small of Liam’s back and a curved smile pressed to his neck.

He takes a few meditative puffs, letting the smoke curl over his tongue, heat his throat.  He thinks about being that catalyst in Liam’s life, his supernova.  His thumb strokes his bottom lip on an exhale of smoke from his nose, the birds already in early morning flight across pastel skies.

Teeth gnaw at his lip on a single thought: _is this what he wants_?  It’s echoed by whether or not he’s willing to take the risk.  The expectation of being Harry and Louis the sequel bites at his tongue until he has to pull in more hot smoke to burn away the acidic aftertaste.  And he breathes through the notion that Liam may not want to take the challenge with him.

Of any of them, before Danielle and heartbreak, Liam was one of the most consistent.  He stayed true to his path, his goals, his mission.

Was Zayn even worth it to him?

There’s an imbalance that unsettles him when the sun lights up purples into pinks, stretches wide into blue, blue skies on the verge of something mythical.  And then he knocks away the ash from his cigarette, feels his heart hammer out something broad, and he can’t forget the ease of Liam’s smile or his kisses or the way his fingers tangled around Zayn’s wrist in his sleep like he’s afraid _Zayn_ was the one who didn’t want this.

It peddles over his brain until he’s grinning, ducking his head in his solitude to disguise his idiotic smirk at the thought of always waking up to those sure eyes.  He looks down at the view of a small backyard, the scratchy roundabout patch of grass that’s faded green under the weight of the clouds with pebbles lining some sort of walkway and the wooden fence arced high but not uninviting like he imagines more famous people have.  He puffs through a gaze at the trees of the neighborhood and the random sparks of light hinting off of fading orangey street lights and there’s no other place he wants to fit himself into.

Not unless it’s Liam’s bed, in Wolverhampton, with the wilderness and a promise to show Zayn more of his world written across his pink, full lips.

The floorboards just outside of his bedroom creak, footfalls near silent and he rotates just enough to see Liam leaning in the archway with his hip propped against the wooden surface, an orange and lime Gatorade in each hand, that twitchy smile and eyes that are wide awake-on reverence –

Or on _Zayn_ , but he could never tell.

Not then, not now.

“Almost done, yeah?” Zayn offers, lifting his near-finished cigarette with the ash dusting off on the morning breeze and a crooked grin to replace the fond one that threatened his lips the second he saw Liam again.

Liam snorts, nodding before tumbling into the room on the tips of his toes like the floor is too cold and his excitement is too much.

Zayn huffs through a snicker, the smoke coursing his tongue and exhaling through his teeth and lips.  The nicotine refuses to sit in his blood like Liam does but he holds onto a few curls of it to dull the suspense of touching that tan skin, mapping out the freckles, tracing out the stardust across his thighs.  He puffs quietly even when Liam inches closer, waving off bits of the smoke before kissing sloppily against Zayn’s temple.

“Still like the green ones?” Liam wonders, shoving a Gatorade at Zayn while stroking an arm over his cheeks to distinguish the blush from the glow.

Zayn blows out a thin fog of smoke, the blue mist swirling about them like flies above the moss.  His lips instinctually lift into that crooked pattern that’s all white teeth with a tongue pressed to them, the words silenced between soft and hard.

“You remember everything,” Zayn mumbles, uncapping the drink to wash back the _‘and I remember how your kisses taste now’_ that’s singed over his tongue.

Liam ducks his head, nudging Zayn with his hip.  He doesn’t respond, not with words, but the flutter of his lashes speak a million sentences drenched in idiotic poetry.

“Come back to bed,” Liam mutters like the words are still too new, too unaccounted for in the dizzy motion of the headlights, the lifting sun.  He brushes cold, bare toes over Zayn’s ankle and Zayn freezes mid-puff with wide eyes at the way Liam’s bubblegum pink tongue strokes his nervous smile.

He flicks the cigarette into the wet bushes below, releasing his grip on coy when Liam tangles thick fingers around his wrist.  A thumb presses at the yin-yang before he laughs, a burst of cataclysmic energy under his bones and he stumbles with Liam toward the bed.

Zayn props himself on his elbows against the sheets – the ones that are still ruined with their come and the scent of Liam’s skin – and he doesn’t hesitate against the push of Liam’s mouth.  His lips are parted by a wily tongue, his skin flushed by the press of Liam’s palm, breath stolen all at once.  Liam smiles against his lips, still that ever-ready sixteen year old under this newfound dominance, and Zayn watches Liam kiss with his eyes closed, his own open.

“I hate when you smoke,” Liam mumbles with a cheeky tongue over Zayn’s bottom lip, “but I think I don’t mind the way you taste.”

“Is that a come joke, Leeyum?” he teases, fingers pulling at the sheets when Liam kisses a little harder.

“No, you donut.”

Zayn hums, sucking on the tip of Liam’s tongue until the smoke in his lungs clouds Liam’s mouth.

“I’m going to make you work out more next year,” Liam promises when they drag apart, restless on the sheets when Zayn’s not close enough.  “Personal trainer.”

“Again with the shagging jokes,” Zayn whispers, fingers sculpting the hard and soft features of Liam’s muscles.

“Fuck off Malik,” Liam laughs breathily, feeding Zayn more skin with rose-tinted cheeks and an urge for something more behind his lashes.

Zayn chews on half of his lip and scoots closer until their shoulders knock.  Their legs brush, still unsure, and Liam’s jumpy and nervous whenever Zayn looks at him.  He’s wound up like a virgin on the eve of something erotic, Zayn’s fingers grazing over his chest but refusing to dip into that hollow where Liam’s heart probably beats a little too fast, a little too loud.

“You know I’m not gonna kick you out of my bed in a few hours, right?  Like, hasn’t crossed my mind at all,” Zayn tells him.  Their chests rise and fall in coordinated puffs and Zayn sneaks a hand into the loose elastic of Liam’s boxers to scratch against missed meters of skin.

“Or like ever, dude,” he adds when Liam lays flat on the sheets, somehow a little more comfortable.  “Like, _never_ , man.  I swear.”

Liam beams up at him, pulling at the sheets until they wrestle around their limbs.  His fingers nudge Zayn’s hip before he sits up, props himself on one hand with taut muscles straining beneath glowing skin.  His reflexes are quicker than Zayn’s thoughts and he’s pushing Zayn back with an unreserved strength.  His fingers are crawling over Zayn’s skin and tenting back the sheets, drawing down the front of Zayn’s briefs.

“I want to try blowing you again,” he says a little less shyer, the reserve siphoned from his voice.  “I want to be great.”

Zayn hides the hitch in his voice with a roll of his hips to drag his briefs lower, smirking.  “Trust me, you were great.”

Liam giggles, lets the sound drift down Zayn’s chest as he kisses lower, lower.  He drags intentional teeth across Zayn’s navel, the thin stitch of hair that trails below it before mumbling, “Then I want to be _perfect_.”

There’s a grin pushed to his lips and Zayn has always loved that competitive edge about Liam – the need to always beat Niall at video games, sing with more definition in his tone than Harry, kick Louis’ arse all over the pitch.

He kicks his legs apart, thighs still tangled in the cotton of his briefs.  There’s an honest smirk on his lips before it turns beckoning, a bit cocky at the way Liam looks up at him from neatly shaven hair around the root, lips skimming the base of his cock.

“Have at it, babe,” he says with a little jerk of his head like when you’re saying _hello_ or _come on, let’s fuck_.

He curls his fingers into the sheets when Liam tests the weight of his dick on that sugary pink tongue and holds down the declarations of endearment until they burn off with his breaths and Liam sinks all the way down his cock like a pro rather than that lad who just learned how to flick his tongue over the head to make Zayn shiver a few hours ago.

 

|*|

 

This is their morning –

The kitchen is probably his favorite view on the mornings he manages to crawl out of bed before _ten_ , a rarity he’s proud of.  The large window lets in a coating of sunlight that scratches over every surface until orange dust fills the air and the gold frame coating the counters looks inviting.  He once read about _Rayleigh scattering_ and the wavelengths of the sun and the complexity in the shades of purple across the floor with bursts of tangerine decorating the stainless steel surface of the refrigerator door invokes deep, calming breaths.  A glint of saffron flexes over the island, deep blues pinned to the sink.  He can barely blink his eyes into focus – too much restless sleeping, too many startling breaths when a strong body wasn’t close enough, post-blowjob bliss disguised as smiles and a high he still hasn’t come down from.

Harry was awake hours before him, making breakfast fajitas from whatever he finds in Zayn’s kitchen and, somewhere between his morning leak and sliding into a loose pair of Liam’s old joggers – he found them buried in the closet, next to a pair of Louis’ Vans and a Wolverhampton jumper – Harry invited Louis and Niall up.  And he finds them like this – in the living room, crowded around each other with loud laughter, plates of food, and waggling eyebrows the second he pads bare feet into the kitchen.

“Good morning sunshine,” Niall swoons with too bright blue eyes and that permanent crooked smile he wears so nobly.

“Oh _lover_ ,” Louis adds, curling into Harry’s side, pushing bare feet into Niall’s lap.  He licks away the grease from the fajitas off his fingers, waves sweetly like he knows the definition of innocence.

Harry grins smugly, pushing back soft curls with wide-awake green eyes.  “Oh Zaynie, your fond is – “

“Fuck off,” Zayn grumbles, shuffling his feet toward the coffee machine, flipping them off at the sound of their combined chuckles.  “The whole lot of you, fuck right off.”

There’s quiet teasing, kissing noises via Niall, and a poorly reenactment of a scene from _the Notebook_ courtesy of Harry and Louis – desperate sounds and manic kisses and so fucking irritating that Zayn has to choke on a laugh to hush down the vindictive words he wants to spit.

His hair is soft, undone, the fringe full over his forehead.  He pushes it back, his thumb sliding over copper tones, faded blonde.  He yawns while trying to figure out the stupid coffee maker that Ant bought him and only his mum or Danny know how to work it before grinning at the already made cup Harry’s left him in the wake of a kitchen disaster.  He makes a face at the soiled pans and leftover cheese, uncooked chicken in the bin.  Grease stains bits of the stove and Harry’s unfinished herbal tea – with strong hints of mint and lemon soaking the air – sits near the edge of the counter.

He loves it.  There’s a thickness in his chest because it all feels so much like _home_.  It reminds him of that house two years ago where they were crowded into one room, Harry snoring somewhere on the floor, Louis curled around Niall’s small frame, Liam shoving a stack of comics into Zayn’s lap with a quiet smirk.

It’s as if they never lost a step in this endless stretch of music and a rise to popularity and touring and losing every bit of themselves to a destiny they didn’t think they could achieve.

But it’s right here, a few feet away.  All of his boys crowded on the couch and settee, passing around a carton of orange juice between them with sticky smiles and sleep-heavy eyes.  The soft roar of _Scarface_ plays the soundtrack to their laughter and shared hums with their feet propped up on the end table.  Stealing each other’s food, smearing citrus from their lips with the back of their hands, nudging elbows to take a piss over who tells the worst jokes.  They’re decadence and luxury, their laughs like an open bonfire, crackling and bright like fresh-turning autumn leaves in the sunlight.

He sips at his coffee, lets the scalding liquid twinge his tongue while the sun bathes his bare shoulders with an honest warmth.  He smirks over the lip of his mug at Louis’ head on Harry’s shoulder, Harry’s fingers moving up the inside of Niall’s cargo shorts, against wispy blonde hairs.  They point out all of their favorite scenes, wave Zayn over but he stays at the island with an elbow resting on the icy surface, his hip propped outward, feet still adjusting to the cold of the floor.

A loud yawn precedes Liam’s entrance into the kitchen, stumbling steps with a hand on the nape of his neck and a pair of jeans sitting low on his hips – with no boxers beneath this time.  He fumbles with his steps, scratching at his belly and chin, looking as exhausted and sleep-rumpled as Zayn feels.  He scrubs at his eyes with the heel of his hand, faltering right up to Zayn’s corner of the island to swipe the last plate of warm fajitas while Harry croons in the background.

Zayn swallows more coffee to stop himself from greeting Harry with a middle finger while Liam knocks their hips, leaning over the island and slipping right into Zayn’s space.  Their hips brush lazily as Liam picks away the onions, peels at stringy melted cheese with a blurred smile.  He looks at their feet rather than Zayn but the blush on his cheeks spreads like wildfire.  He relaxes into the way Zayn rests a hand on the small of his back, moaning quietly around a bite of tortilla and chicken and peppers, eyelashes beating out a _good morning_ than Zayn grins at.

“Sleep good, man?” Zayn asks, his voice clouded with sleep, deep and scratchy like he’s been chain smoking again.

Liam hums a response, shyly glancing up through his lashes, creating a ring of warmth in Zayn’s stomach.  He’s trying to hide his smile in his shoulder but he fails and Zayn trips his fingers up his spine just for the rush of giggles that seep past Liam’s lips.

He lets Liam steal his coffee, sipping at it before making a face, wrinkling his nose at the heady scent.

“Too much sugar,” Liam mumbles, passing the mug back but not before swallowing another mouthful.

_Not enough you_ , Zayn thinks, flicking his eyes away from the inescapable grin Liam offers him between a few more bites of his fajita.  Their bare feet press against each other on the cold floor while Zayn swirls a Green Lantern symbol between Liam’s shoulder blades, the soft skin rising with goosebumps and Liam’s cheeks flush a wild scarlet.

Zayn smirks when Liam shuffles closer, dropping cream into Zayn’s coffee without asking, taking another voluntary sip with a pinkish smile.

“Better,” he mutters, his voice still dragging, hoarse.

Zayn rolls his eyes, shoves the mug at Liam to finish before washing away in their silence, the way their fingers meet halfway across the island just to touch, nothing more.

Harry clears his throat roughly, stealing away the ambition Zayn was corralling just to kiss Liam.  He curses under his breath while Liam stretches his neck to grin over his shoulder, nodding at the three idiots who smile goofily, riotous greetings just for Liam like he’s been absent for _months_ , not hours.

Louis sits up, Niall leaning half-off the back of the couch like Harry did while Harry sits on his feet, absently peeling an orange but watching them closely.  Zayn feels jumpy and everything twitches and he thinks of Liam just a few hours ago, on his sheets, under his gaze, ready to do whatever Zayn asked.

“Hey,” Niall says with a drag of the last letter, grinning.  “Hey, I’ve got a question for scientific research.”

“For inquiring minds,” Harry adds with wagging eyebrows, his dimples standing out against the warmth of his cheeks.

“Because we’re your mates and nosey as shit, quite simply,” Louis tags on, a defiant lift of his chin that’s reminiscent of every conversation Louis starts with _‘if you’re quite finished, you can tell me about’_ and Zayn can’t duck away from the way three sets of eyes are on _him_ rather than Liam.

“Sounds complicated,” Liam says and Zayn exhales a thankful breath, stretching his fingers over the bare landscape of Liam’s hip out of gratitude.

“When are we not that?” Niall wonders, leaning off to his right to nuzzle against Louis.

“When you’re pissed out of your minds,” Liam laughs, the sensation rolling up Zayn’s spine.

“Or high,” Harry puts in with a mild shrug.

“Amazing times lads,” Niall says gleefully, his smile an inch brighter than the heat of the sun.

Harry nods an agreement, Liam shrugging one shoulder like it’s not important.  Not as important as feeding Zayn some of the leftover coffee and unconsciously stroking over Zayn’s tattoos like he’s never seen them before.

“If you’re quite finished, you can tell me about – “

Zayn chokes on a noise, drowning out the sound of Louis’ annoyed voice.  He feels the tension drag over his muscles even though Liam’s trying to soothe him into something else with his calloused fingers.  He creases his bottom lip white with his teeth, narrowing his eyes at Louis because _no, don’t, please_ –

“Would you say you’re in love with him?” Louis asks, careless with his approach, completely Louis.

“Tommo,” Niall shrieks, pinching Louis’ hip.  “We said we were going to be, well, what’s the word Haz?”

“ _Discreet_ , Ni, discreet,” Harry hums, sighing at Louis’ petulance and refusal to play fair.  “And, by definition, Lou is incapable of such reproach.”

“Stay off of Google, you idiot.  You’re learning too much,” Louis argues with a hiss but his smirk is so affectionate that the longing is hard to hide in the dizzy glow of morning sun and piled-up boys he loves.

Harry turns to Zayn instead of reciting Shakespeare to Louis, something serious engulfing his expression.  He clears his throat again, like a scholar or a pretentious bastard, before asking, “Well, would you?”

Zayn swallows, half-turning toward them because he’s learned years ago how to play along.  He knows avoidance is near impossible with these boys and giving a fuck seems to have disappeared from his repertoire.  But Liam freezes against him, his fingers still over Zayn’s skin like he doesn’t want him to answer –

Not just yet.

Zayn pushes his fringe back, tries not to smile when Liam helps him because, fuck, where did this feeling come from?  He sniffs at the dew from the grass outside leaking in through a cracked window, the almost drained coffee, the decadent smell of Liam next to him – the same one that’s staining Zayn’s pillow now instead of the aroma of hair wax and cigarettes.  He shuffles his feet on the ground and swallows a tight inhale of exhilaration.

“You mean like I am with you lot?” he shoots back, drifting eyes over each of them like a dare.

“No, are you fucking bullshitting me with that Malik, come on – “

Harry tosses a hand over Niall’s mouth, reaching a little too far and knocking him into Louis.

“Not like _your mum_ , Zayn,” Louis whines, smacking Harry’s hand away from Niall’s lips.  He straightens himself while Harry and Niall fall into a playful fight, rolling over cushions and knocking over the orange juice.

“Like,” Niall starts from beneath Harry, the words choked by Harry’s strategic fingers up his ribs.

“Like we think you do and like you know you have been and just answer the fucking question,” Harry rushes out before Niall punches his dick with little malice but complete force, Harry rolling off the couch.

“A bit harsh Horan, y’think?” Louis scolds, shoving Niall away.  “I might need that later.”

Liam gasps on a laugh beside him and those fingers start to move again just as Zayn inhales.  It’s calming, the way they find the playing card knit against Zayn’s ribs, the thick heart on his hip.  A thumb sweeps under the waistband of loose bottoms, the heat unbearable until it’s not.

Until it’s just the heat of Zayn’s cheeks, painted a slumbering carnation that he will never adjust to, that stings the worst.

“Come on Zayner,” Niall cries out from the wedge of cushions and spirited laughter.  “Just answer the fucking question.”

Zayn pauses, cornering a section of his bottom lip with teeth.  He twists at the flesh, absently searching fingers up Liam’s forearm, the comfort of four arrows on the underside.  His thumbnail scratches out his name next to each arrow, the letters wide and _right there_.

“Maybe,” he says, still learning the feel of this voice, the one that’s coiled with unassured strength like when he was auditioning for some stupid show that brought him here.  The same show that gave him Liam.

He clears his throat at the scowl Louis gives him, dragging his eyes over their feet – his stuck while Liam’s shift anxiously.

“Yeah, dude, I do,” he adds with a line of shaky breaths.  Courage redefines the shape of the muscles in his throat, eyes lifting, Liam’s fingers curling around his wrist.  “I love him.  I can’t help it – I think it’s obvious.”

Louis’ grin spreads rapidly, Harry peeking up from a fallen stance, Niall’s cheeks stained pink as he looks at them, bright-eyed.  Zayn shoves his lip between his teeth and refuses to look at Liam, not until a kiss is pressed to his cheek and he’s pulled under Liam’s arm.

“He loves you,” Harry whispers to Liam, hiding behind his forearm like he’s impressed.

“Fucking right, he does,” Louis cheers, the boom of his voice the trumpet solo you never get tired of.

“Now that we’ve sorted that,” Niall huffs, turning away, dragging Harry up until they’re cuddled together again, “Shall we commence with the FIFA tournament you arseholes promised me?  I owe Leeymo a royal beatdown for the last game we played and, no, Lou you cannot sit in Harry’s lap this time.”

The clatter of laughter set between them strums just an octave higher than Zayn’s rapid heartbeat.  He swallows down bravery until it feels aggressive over his chest.  Liam’s chin, still rough with stubble, scratches over his bare shoulder and his calloused fingers smear grease against Zayn’s hip until the flesh is shiny, accented by the rift of sun through the window.  He inclines into Liam because, for once, this feels certain.

“Superhero marathon later?” Liam offers, licking at his dry lips, the ones Zayn still hasn’t tasted in this light.

Zayn snorts, nodding.  “DC or Marvel?”

Liam wriggles his eyebrows, dragging his lips over Zayn’s neck, nose pressed to the shadowy hollow under his jaw.

“We can do both,” Liam whispers, thick voice like honey.  “But no _Daredevil_ this time.”

Zayn concedes with a laugh, easing an arm around Liam’s hip.  “I make no promises.”

Liam groans against Zayn’s shoulder and Zayn turns just enough to bite at Liam’s lips before he can utter a comeback.  He breathes a kiss that’s lighthearted and honest to Liam’s lips, stutters with the way Liam blinks his eyes shut and catapults this endless dance around _what should be said_ for the way Liam tastes in the morning instead.

 

|*|

 

This is their sunset –

The pull of the sun over the sky is hidden in the dark of the living room, the shadows produced by artificial light from the television and the lamps clicked off.  The blue of the screen washes Niall’s pale skin azure and Harry’s cornered in his favorite chair next to the couch with his knees pulled up.  _The Avengers_ has conquered the last hour of their lives, following an overanalyzed viewing of _Batman Returns_ by Louis, to be followed by a back-to-back tidal wave of all of the _X-Men_ films – even though Zayn hates the third one and Harry always falls asleep halfway through the first one.

He’s cuddled beneath Liam’s arm on one cushion even though there’s so much space they could dominate since Niall and Louis are on the floor arguing over pizza toppings, Harry tweeting useless quotes found on Google.  Their legs are tangled in basketball shorts – both belonging to Liam and Zayn loves the way the ones he wears are too baggy, loose around his slender hips – and their bare feet keep brushing over the coffee table.  The popcorn is owned by Niall, along with the bottle of Coke they’ve been sharing for the better part of three hours – except Liam has his own bottled water because he still can’t drink after anyone other than Zayn – and Liam’s fingers haven’t stopped carding through his hair since the opening sequence of _the Fantastic Four_.

He presses his nose to Liam’s throat when Louis wrestles Niall’s phone away, feet kicking wildly at each other while Louis orders _extra pepperoni_ instead of chicken and pineapple like Niall wants.  He synchronizes his breathing with Liam’s when their fingers twine in Liam’s lap, trying to still feel masculine even when Liam’s broader, stronger, so brawny.

Liam laughs into his hair like he knows and Zayn bites at his collar for the way the sound turns high-pitched.

“I love you too, man,” Liam says behind the giggles, nudging Zayn’s head until he tips back to look up at Liam.  “Just so you know.”

And Zayn does.  He thinks he always has.

He twists into the fading sun that stains the sky a rusted orange, three-quarters pink and waving purples.  He feels Liam’s fingers on his scalp and pauses on the kiss Lam gives him to try and remember a time when this didn’t feel natural.  They part with brushing noses and pink cheeks and the whole world around them neglected for whispers about their favorite parts of _the Dark Knight_.

“We’ll never make it to New York and Rockefeller Center and Madison Square Garden if you two don’t fuck out that look you keep giving each other,” Harry tells them, glancing over the screen of his phone with a massive grin, sharp indentations to his dimples, dazed green-gold eyes.

Liam blushes into Zayn’s neck, lips brushing over pressure points not yet explored while Zayn groans softly.  They coil around each other like when they were just a few years younger, paradise beneath their fingers.  It’s stupid and Liam will always, _always_ be his best mate, that lad he reads comic books with and makes listen to all of his favorite tunes for the expression that captures Liam’s face and chat about meaningless things instead of the problems that really paralyze him.

But he’s so, so much more in this dark, this part of Zayn’s heart.

He decides, in these shadows of his house, with this new feeling raised over his skin, that _this_ is his favorite place – right next to Liam.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm still on hiatus from writing AU's or long fics, but I felt _wonderful_ writing this "drabble." Maybe I'll do more short, fluff pieces until I regain my confidence with my other stuff? Just simple, short, and Ziam.
> 
> I hope it was enjoyable on some level. I know I don't usually write canon stories and those fics aren't really my strongest, but I hope it's a little better than some of my other stuff?
> 
> Reach me [here](http://jmcats.tumblr.com) xx Jesse


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